A pow­er­ful earth­quake rocked Myan­mar and neigh­bor­ing Thai­land on Fri­day, de­stroy­ing build­ings, a bridge and a dam. At least 144 peo­ple were killed in Myan­mar, where pho­tos and video from two hard-hit cities showed ex­ten­sive dam­age. At least eight died in the Thai cap­i­tal, where a high-rise un­der con­struc­tion col­lapsed.

The new new­ly ap­point­ed Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Ab­dulKa­dir Musse, is warn­ing of a dis­turb­ing surge in vi­o­lence against chil­dren in the re­gion.

A pow­er­ful earth­quake rocked Myan­mar and neigh­bor­ing Thai­land on Fri­day, killing at least three peo­ple in Bangkok and bury­ing dozens when a high-rise build­ing un­der con­struc­tion col­lapsed. Footage shared on so­cial me­dia from Myan­mar’s sec­ond-largest city showed wide­spread de­struc­tion, rais­ing fears that many were trapped un­der the rub­ble or killed.

For­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) St Joseph MP Kennedy Swarats­ingh, who de­buted on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' eco­nom­ic con­sul­ta­tion plat­form in St Joseph last night, has slammed cur­rent dif­fi­cul­ties in T&T and en­dorsed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be the next prime min­is­ter.

For now, the Drag­on Gas deal is not dead. In fact, Gov­ern­ment is still mov­ing at full speed to ful­fil the en­er­gy arrange­ment with Venezuela.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the pro­gramme for Cuban health work­ers em­ployed in this coun­try’s hos­pi­tals will con­tin­ue, as he has in­struct­ed two min­is­ters to en­sure the Unit­ed States knows this coun­try has “ticked every sin­gle box” re­gard­ing pro­gramme.

Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil has con­demned US in­ter­fer­ence in the Petro­caribe en­er­gy al­liance, fol­low­ing Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio’s on­go­ing tour of Ja­maica, Guyana, and Suri­name this week.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has dis­missed claims that the Gov­ern­ment and the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion were reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lans liv­ing in this coun­try to vote in the Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment, the Cen­tral Bank and the coun­try's top bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives are ex­plor­ing "a cer­tain pos­si­bil­i­ty" to re­solve T&T's long-stand­ing for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty cri­sis.

Tu­na­puna UNC con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Prakash Bharath has thrown his sup­port be­hind for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der, as the par­ty hi­er­ar­chy re­port­ed­ly de­lib­er­ates on his pos­si­ble can­di­da­cy for the seat in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Crime Stop­pers T&T (CSTT) are hop­ing to re­cov­er at least 100 il­le­gal guns be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends on April 13.

Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says he can­not un­der­stand how Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie could con­tin­ue to sit in of­fice “as though noth­ing has hap­pened” fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing in the Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar mat­ter.